Hydrophilizing low energy surfaces, in particular hydrophobic surfaces, to achieve a better wetting/adhesion is a key technological issue encountered in many industrial fields (such as automotive, paints, coatings, ink printings, and fluidics). Related properties like antifouling, antisoiling, water sheeting, anti-UV are also in a great need, more particularly in household and Home care. This issue is generally handled by physisorbing or chemisorbing a functional layer onto the solid surface. The final surface properties will then strongly depend on physical (such as size, developed surface area, spatial organization, and physical interactions) and chemical features (such as nature of the core/shell, surface physical-chemistry: functionalities, and groups, charges of the adsorbed entities (such as particles, and macromolecule).
The large variety of functional polymers available in industry enables in principle the functionalization of a large range of substrates. However, the direct adsorption of functional macromolecules onto a surface is usually very selective: a hydrophilic negatively charged surface can only be functionalized by neutral or cationic (or combination of both) polymers; the functionalization of a hydrophobic surface is hard to achieve with charged species and needs at least some hydrophobic components. For example, a polyelectrolyte or a neutral-charged copolymer will adsorb strongly on a high energy ceramic or metallic surfaces, bringing the expected functionality. However, it will not efficiently work on low energy polymeric materials like polystyrene (PS).
A second important problem when dealing with adsorbed layers is their weak resistance toward cleaning, rinsing and aging. For hydrophilic polymers, the interaction with reactive or high energy surfaces (oxide layers, ceramics, metals . . . ) is quite strong (electrostatic and hydrogen bonding interactions . . . ) and the adsorbed layer is anchored efficiently on the surface. This is not the case with hydrophobic and inert polymer surfaces, where only Van der Waals forces are acting to promote the adsorption. In this case the macromolecules, soluble in water, are easily removed with further rinsing.
A goal of the invention is to provide a more general way that does not rely on the physical-chemistry of the substrate.
An another goal is to develop aqueous dispersions or solutions of hybrid coacervates which can deliver the different desired functionalities, more particularly antifouling, water sheeting, antisoiling, anti-deposition, and anti-UV properties onto all kinds of surfaces, no matter what the physical or chemical nature of the surface is.
Another goal is to provide dispersions or solutions of hybrid coacervates as neutral as possible to be able to adsorb on all kinds of surfaces.
Another goal is to provide a process for the preparation of such aqueous dispersions or solutions of hybrid coacervates having the above mentioned properties.
Another goal is to provide a treating composition of such surfaces comprising said aqueous dispersions or solutions.